


Soft

by penceyprat



Category: The 1975 (Band)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Mental Health Issues, but its a bit emotionally jarring, lots of nasty shit but not with george and matty, matty and george love each other though, other relationships mentioned vaguely, thats good and important, the nasty shit is matty's past basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 14:17:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8059531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penceyprat/pseuds/penceyprat
Summary: When the room seemed fuzzy at the ends, with faded flickering lights somewhere off on a street that seems worlds away, and the night was mellow, the darkness painted in shades of pink instead of blue, and George’s breath was warm against his skin. Those are the good nights. Soft, mellow, gentle, like tiny ripples of the tide.
When Matty’s head seemed fuzzy at the edges, with faded flickering lights somewhere behind his eyes, his breathing steady, heartbeat slower than ever before, the night seemed to be crafted from shades of gold, and he liked to trust in the illusion, one day it won’t just remind him of the drugs. Those are the bad ones. Tonight is one of them.





	

When the room seemed fuzzy at the ends, with faded flickering lights somewhere off on a street that seems worlds away, and the night was mellow, the darkness painted in shades of pink instead of blue, and George’s breath was warm against his skin. Those are the good nights. Soft, mellow, gentle, like tiny ripples of the tide.

They sit there for hours those nights. Together. Just to be together, with warm breaths and cold fingers, and each other on their lips. When Matty had first met George, he’d looked at those lips and swore they’d taste of vanilla. He’d laid eyes on those fingertips, and imagined them strong and calloused, as if they might burn holes into his skin. He’d imagined that George might burn holes into him too. But it seemed he’d managed to work out as well enough at that by himself.

They sat there together at twenty five, more than ten years down the line, knowing each and every piece of each other, close as if they were sew intricately with thread: a glossy bright white to shine under the moonlight. They sat there at twenty five and Matty still looked at George like he once had, even though his lips had never tasted of vanilla, and his fingertips felt nothing but gentle against his skin.

When Matty’s head seemed fuzzy at the edges, with faded flickering lights somewhere behind his eyes, his breathing steady, heartbeat slower than ever before, the night seemed to be crafted from shades of gold. He liked to trust in the illusion, one day it won’t just remind him of the drugs.

He’d told himself that at nineteen. He’d told himself of the world at nineteen, looked at the stars and truly believed that amidst his fingertips he held every one of them. That he had a friend in the silence and the inky blackness of the night sky lay like arms around his chest. He’d told himself that was warm and that was safe. That he didn’t need to believe in anything besides the cold chill to the air and the falsified sense of calm.

They sat there together at twenty five and watched the stars. The night still lay hazy at the edges. There’d been far too many sleepless nights and he’d tired of chasing demons around his head. But George’s fingers linked with his, not strong, not firm, but soft. The stars didn’t shine as brightly as they used to, but these days he got up to see the sun.

The hum of the open fridge door. Bright blue light. Dark nights and darker days. A December where he’d clung so desperately to himself for warmth. He’d never meant to hide away from George. Just from himself. But it all those strings, all those lies, it was the feeling of something missing as he sat alone in the room. It was the bad days. They came less frequently than they had before, but still there was no avoiding them. 

He’d let George take him back to bed. He’d let George do anything. He might have just worried about that if now George had ever been anything but gentle with him and if his fingers had been anything more than soft. It took him quite a while to figure that George wasn’t nearly the person he’d thought he once was, but was in fact just the person he did need.

They’d waste away the morning in each other’s arms. Matty would throw away years for George. And indeed he had. He’d lose himself in the cold breeze, in the open window, in the hum of the TV, in George’s hand on his thigh, in cold mornings that seemed to last forever. When the sun did rise the world seemed to stop. The sadness only ever seemed to rear its head in the night time anymore, but god Matty did love to watch the moon.

He’d taken sleeping pills at twenty two. When the world was very much black and white and George’s fingertips traced patterns around his mind and not his thighs. When everything had to taste sweet or it just wasn’t worth his lips. When everything had to be easy or just wasn’t worth his mind. When everything had to last forever or it just wasn’t worth his time.

He almost sought to poison himself on his own words, yearning just to see the night through. Yearning for skin against skin, yearning for anyone who thought enough to let him in. He wanted a heart not a brain. But surrounded himself in broken glasses on the kitchen floor. It was early mornings and cuts on his body. It was days when he could still feel the blood and the mess on the floor. 

He’d wanted to slice a fucking hole in his chest just to force something inside.

Yet all he had to say for himself was shaking fingertips. He was terrified. And then it had snowed that one Christmas. And blood ran red again. The world didn’t seem so sharp, like everything could slice him apart. Candles burned on for days; the cold didn’t seem so much anymore.

He’d taken so many sleeping pills one night but could never quite close his eyes. The world went soft. Fuzzy. Words echoed around his head from a party the other night: too many ‘I love you’s and far too many recipients. 

Drink didn’t taste the same. But he’d never drank it for the taste. It just didn’t seem to do anything anymore either. He’d craved something stronger, something more than walls in a million shades of beige, something wouldn’t freeze or scold him, something warm. He just didn’t quite know what warm was anymore.

Winter and summer flickered on and off like switches in his head and the days tasted the same. At twenty three he grew to crave the sharper nights, the ones where at the very least he could feel something. There were too many hazy days, and boys with nothing to say for themselves, and girls he couldn’t even distinguish by their shades of lipstick.

There’d came a point where he’d look into a room and see just copies of the one same person. As if everything had faded out into black and white. Fuzzy and lost. He craved bitter nights and harder drugs, something to cling to in the come down from it all. A come down to what exactly? He’d never been quite sure. He’d wondered if he’d hit the bottom yet or if he was still just falling.

Every night was the same party. Over and over again. Every bottle contained the same wine. And every glass smashed onto the same floor. His hands still bled in the same way. He knew it was different girls with concerned looks from across the room, but god they all did look the same. 

He’d closed his eyes and opened them again when he stopped bleeding from his hands and the blood came from his lips instead. He’d never thought you could kiss someone for so long that it hurt. But he’d never thought that the world could paint itself in just the very same shade of grey. 

Those kisses never tasted of vanilla. Fingertips never felt hard nor soft against his skin. They felt like nothing at all. There were some nights in empty rooms and his mind did wander whether they’d been girls or just ghosts in the bed next to him.

Flashes of colour came back to him like moving pictures, like a old photo album, like memories of a past life. Before everything had went wrong, before he’d seized the world so tightly in his hands that it had sliced them apart. Before he sat at twenty three with absent fingers and an absent mind. 

It had been the drugs that had done it. The boys not the girls. The girls were nothing. There were so many girls and only ever one. Some nights he’d wondered if they were all just the same girl. Some nights he’d wondered if he was just a million different people, and this was just one night. Over and over again. Until the end of time.

But smashing glasses on the floor could never leave him behind. Before he’d been the one to have done it. Before they’d been his marks on his hands. It wasn’t fire that burned the most. It was the cold. 

He’d thought he’d known the world but he’d never known him at all. 

He’d just found a dozen different people to fill that role. He thought he’d found the one but he’d found spread legs and sweaty palms against the bedroom wall. He’d found showers for days. Just to feel the water on his skin. Sometimes it ran red. Sometimes it ran aquamarine.

He closed his eyes those nights and opened them in a swimming pool. The same one from when he’d been a kid. Floating on his back. Lost out there for days. Blurred shapes out behind the windows. It had been that which brought him back to what he’d once knew. 

He’d never understood why he’d been so scared to drown when it was a shark’s bite that was holding him afloat.

He missed it. He couldn’t help but miss it. A warm house and a bloody nose. The kitchen sink splattered with blood. There was nothing that the water couldn’t wash away.

But he’d turned twenty three nonetheless, and one day he remembered how to feel with colours enough to paint a scene and he’d truly feared who he’d been. Who they’d been together. In their shitty little home. With the manufactured endings and nights that didn’t leave his mind.

Nothing quite filled the hole he’d made at seventeen.

He hadn’t tasted like vanilla he’d tasted like vodka, like cheap beer, with sweaty palms and slurred words and Matty had crumbled under his fingertips like old plaster.

He’d been his boy. Ever since he’d first seen him. That was a decision Matty had made for himself when he’d still known the world to fit under his own idea of things. When he thought his mind had all but ran out of surprises and every Friday night was one and the same.

He hadn’t tasted like vanilla, he’d tasted like strong words, heavy gasps, the worst hangover in the world and their last night.

They sat there at twenty five and couldn’t quite believe the boys they’d been at seventeen. George couldn’t quite believe the person he’d let Matty fall away and become. It had been his own mess to pick up in the end. Matty just couldn’t quite believe it had taken them six years to see that.

The recollection of feeling came with the recollection of his own thoughts and feelings. He grew tired of girls and spent two weeks sat alone trying to tell himself that all boys weren’t like the two he’d known.

Like the one he’d wanted and the one he’d tried just so hard to please.

Girls never seemed to mean as much. It scared himself that first night. At the club with lights too bright and hazy mistakes playing games with each other around his mind. He drank enough. Enough to ensure the edges of the world blurred out slightly, until his lips grew numb, until he could barely even feel his cheeks.

He bit his lip until it began to bleed and faced himself in the bathroom with an all too familiar edge to it all. He wasn’t the boy he’d once been, but still, he watched the blood run into the sink and tried to think of more than green eyes and someone he’d watched pretend to love him.

He knew nothing about love, but he knew the world about sex. He knew the world of fake nights and faker smiles, of instances that dragged themselves out forever. He stood in that bathroom wished to turn everything back, to be sixteen again, to fit everything properly into place this time.

Even at twenty three, even with six years that had distanced them. He yearned for George. For the boy that had been his best friend. The subject of every nightmare and every dream. Every girl had been the same because in his mind they’d all been him.

He’d never tasted like vanilla. He’d tasted like nothing at all. He’d tasted like a boy that wouldn’t love him back.

His first boyfriend. The one he’d had at twenty two. With green eyes and dark hair and old needles in little bags at the bottom of the bin. He’d at least tasted of something. But it had never been more than blood and sweat and too much to drink and his hands had been the kind of strong that he’d once dreamt about, but they’d never been anything but rough, ripping holes into his skin.

He spent forever in that bathroom at twenty three. He closed his eyes and placed George beside him in the dusty mirror. He’d pictured his company. He’d pictured the people they could have been. It was just when he let go of that dream and he opened his eyes, ready for his heart to sink. When he watched the bathroom door open and George step in.

In Matty’s head they went their separate ways. He dragged this George away from the one he’d loved at sixteen. From the one who’d been the perfect boy. From the one who’d walked away all too soon. In his head he went home and he watched reality TV and listened to the rain hit the windows like a million tiny bullets. He focused on how far he’d come and how much he’d stepped away from the person he’d once been.

But they’d ended up in silence. In company. In a long walk and two packets of cigarettes. They were both older. But George’s eyes looked just as warm, just as beautiful. And in the moments that their fingers had brushed, they’d felt nothing but soft.

Silences became conversations. Days became weeks and weeks became months. Matty had turned twenty four in George’s living room. Back when he still slept on the sofa. Back when there had been such a thing as separate beds and separate lives, when they’d lived like two seperate people.

Spring had turned to summer and George had first kissed him. It had been a long night. Painfully sober and painfully real, with far too many words and the truth biting as hard as the sharp edges of two years prior; Matty ought to have expected as much, as it was just that which he’d dived back into. 

But George had kissed him and the world felt warm for the first time in years. But still, he’d never tasted like vanilla. Just like summer, like hot breath, like mountains of worry and expectation crashing back around him. He tasted like fire. Like the spark of something. Like a kiss that lasted forever. Like a moment stretched out longer than both of their lives up to that point.

And even though it was the middle of the night, the sky lit up in a million shades of pink the moment Matty had opened his eyes.

Matty had turned twenty five not in George’s living room. But in the bedroom they shared. In the double bed with white sheets that seemed almost unnaturally clean. Matty had turned twenty five in George’s arms, Matty had awoken that morning with George between his thighs, and the world all warm and fuzzy at the edges. Soft. Like honey.

He’d never ignored the dial tones and the empty moments and the people they’d once been. The missed gazes and the empty year before. Twenty four had been steady, gradual, a slope, as they slotted the pieces together and became the people that they’d meant to be.

As harsh as the world had been, Matty didn’t let himself forget a single thing, as they sat there together, months on, at twenty five. The nights grew dark again, but the world seemed to glow a much brighter shade of pink that it had ever before.

They’d sit up for hours. Even as George fell asleep, he’d get up to put Matty to bed again. To put him to rest again. To close the open window, as they sat at twenty five in front of the TV. To keep the cold out, to turn the heating on and watch the sun ascend into the sky.

It was genuine smiles and a slow start to a morning. Because even at twenty five, there were bad nights. They’d never be perfect, there was no such thing as perfect people.

But Matty no longer saw broken glass on the kitchen floor, no longer saw blood in the sink, no longer saw the same face in every room. No longer saw the same colours every night.

Nothing ever did taste the same anymore. But never quite of vanilla. George was never quite the person he’d thought he’d be. Their life had never quite been the way he’d dreamt of it. He’d known nothing of the world at nineteen. And still he knew little at twenty five.

But he knew that he was happy as the room began to warm up. In the golden glow of the morning. With George’s fingertips brushing soft against his skin.

With a sleepy conversation and lips against his. He tasted like the world. Like all the oceans and earth within it. He tasted like the bottom of the swimming pool. Like the bottom of his lungs and all the air within them. Like the bottom of his heart and all the love within it.

He tasted like George; he tasted like home.

Even on the bad nights, when he couldn’t quite those six years out of his head.

Even on the nights where he woke up and thought he was twenty two all over again, waking just to through the contents of his stomach in the toilet bowl. Waking just to see a headache pass and the swirls of the night sky rearrange themselves back into stars.

But he’d never needed to hold the stars in his fingers to know they were looking out for him up in the sky. And he’d never needed to rule the whole world to know that the ground still lay firm under his each and every footstep.

He kept his head on his shoulders and took himself back to bed, put the past behind him, and instead clung to the times when the room seemed fuzzy at the ends, with faded flickering lights somewhere off on a street that seemed worlds away, and the night was mellow, the darkness painted in shades of pink instead of blue, and George’s breath was warm against his skin. Those are the good nights. 

Soft, mellow, gentle, like tiny ripples of the tide.

Like the whole world. Like all the oceans and the earth within it.

Like a kiss that lasted days. And enough on the way to last him an entire lifetime.

  
  



End file.
